When Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla of the Czech Republic made a state visit to the United States in 2003, the European Union (EU) was considering a “constitution.” In spite of considerable opposition, the constitution’s supporters succeeded in making sure that the document made no mention of Europe’s Christian roots — in fact, they opposed even the mention of religion.
At an informal dinner, I asked Prime Minister Spidla to explain this view, which he supported.
“I have just returned from Athens,” he told me. “It is there, and not in Rome, that Europe finds its true roots.”
Welcome to the Europe of the Unknown God (Acts 17:23).
In the years since, the EU has been perpetuating that argument in countless ways on multiple fronts. Today it is a full-fledged war.
If PM Spidla loved Athens so much, why didn’t he understand Aristotle’s simple principle of cause and effect? When Christendom is ripped from its Christian roots, what must come to pass? What is left?
Robert Cardinal Sarah answered that question bluntly in a recent address in Poland. Europe “is now plunging into nihilism,” he observed, turning away from the flesh-and-blood realities of history and nature to embrace instead vapid content-free abstractions. “Europe, built on faith in Christ, cut off from its Christian roots, is now in a period of quiet apostasy,” he said.
Wanderer readers are familiar with Poland’s reaffirmation of the Catholic faith, when over a million Poles prayed the rosary on the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, begging Our Lady to keep Poland Catholic and free.
Now Poland’s neighbors have joined in the call to preserve Christianity. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has rejected the demands of the EU bureaucracy that all EU members allow unlimited immigration from Islamic countries.
The diktat from Brussels, the EU’s “capital,” is an “attack on our sovereignty,” says Orban, who two years ago pointed to his country’s unique history:
“When it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones [in Europe] who have experience because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years.”
The new arrivals, said Orban, “have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. . . .
“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see.”
To what is Orban referring?
Polish Minister Mariusz Blaszczak recently observed that “the migration crisis is the most serious problem affecting Europe” and that the crisis was caused “by the irresponsible acting of some European leaders.”
And those leaders are rapidly losing the support of their people. Traditional establishment parties are losing all over Europe. Scotland, Catalonia, Italy’s Northern League, Germany’s Bavaria — the list is growing every day.
A week ago “over 95 percent of residents of Italy’s Lombardy region voted in favor of greater autonomy for the region during a nonbinding referendum,” President of Lombardy Roberto Maroni said.
Meanwhile, Europe’s left just keeps on drifting. The Republic of Ireland honors the murderous terrorist Che Guevara. Sweden is quickly becoming the rape capital of the world. Since 90 percent of the assailants are identified as “foreigners running in gangs,” Sweden tries to placate them with a stamp featuring a mosque.
In Germany, terrorist Jihadis are so numerous that police assigned to monitoring them routinely take weekends off. And last week, Italy’s foreign minister said that migration seen in the Mediterranean “is only the tip of the iceberg of an exodus that may end up being of biblical proportions.”
Even the commercial world is catching on.
Supermarket giant Lidl airbrushes a Christian cross from a church on its Greek food packaging “in order not to hurt the sensibility of non-Christian costumers.” Nestlé follows suit with its Greek yogurt.
Where voters have a voice, they speak. In Austria, two conservative parties will join in a government for the first time in memory, leaving the socialists in the opposition and the Greens out of Parliament altogether.
In the Czech Republic, Andrej Babis, known affectionately as the “Czech Donald Trump,” was elected prime minister a week ago Sunday, and immediately called for other European countries to join him in a coalition to stop illegal immigration into their countries.
Every EU country allowing such immigration has suffered a staggering rise in sexual assaults, with Afghans apparently the most prominent aggressors (American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan saw firsthand the rank perversion rampant among Afghan Pashtuns, but were forbidden to stop it or even to mention it).
Unfortunately, the EU has responded not with firm and decisive programs to protect its people, but by telling journalists not to interview “extremists” about the massive problems, nor to mention the ethnicity of apprehended criminals.
Great Britain has voted to leave the EU, but Intelligence Director General Andrew Parker recently reported that terrorist operations are already “at a scale and a pace we have not seen before.” London is now a more dangerous place than New York City.
Renowned Middle East expert Bernard Lewis is blunt. Muslims “seem to be about to take over Europe,” he tells The Jerusalem Post, and future prospects are grim. “Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?” he asks.
What does all this mean for America? Like the EU state-controlled media, U.S. Opposition Media are as silent on the mortal threat to Europe as they are regarding our own immigration crisis. Dr. Angelo Codevilla doesn’t see the U.S. to be so far gone as Europe, but “Europe’s unsustainable socioeconomic model — bureaucratized economies, social welfare, and demographic decline” are a warning to the U.S.
“Mass migration into Euro-American civilization,” he writes, “especially people from the Muslim world who neither share in nor sympathize with that civilization — is accelerating the crisis. Confidence in the future is being replaced by the sense that living as before will be impossible.”
On October 1, Pope Francis spoke to a group of migrants in Bologna, calling them “the warriors of hope.”
But if they are “warriors,” against whom are they waging war?

Vatican City, Feb 17, 2018 / 05:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Saturday the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has reconfirmed Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston as head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, also reconfirming seven members…Continue Reading

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to the Trump administration’s 2019 federal budget proposal on Monday, the U.S. Catholic bishops are urging for a budget that shows greater concern for “‘the least of these” and warning that the U.S. “must never seek…Continue Reading

A Connecticut high school student may have to decide whether to remove a Planned Parenthood sticker on her laptop or leave her Catholic school after administrators told her to remove it, her parents said. Sophomore Kate Murray’s parents told the Greenwich Time that…Continue Reading

February 8, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Bible’s condemnation of homosexual acts should be taken in “context” with Biblical times, Jesuit Father James Martin toldGeorgetown University students recently. Martin said as well that Catholics who support gay “marriage” should have no problem…Continue Reading

JACKSON, Mississippi, February 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A bill banning abortion on babies more than 15 weeks old passed the Mississippi state House today 79-31. House Bill 1510 would make Mississippi the state with the most pro-life laws if it…Continue Reading

Just three Democrats in the U.S. Senate supported a bill on Monday that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks when unborn babies are capable of feeling pain. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which has strong public support from Republicans…Continue Reading

ROME, January 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In an exclusive interview two weeks after issuing a profession of immutable truths about sacramental marriage, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is inviting his brother bishops around the world to join in raising a common voice…Continue Reading

As Katholisch.de, the official website of the German bishops, reports today, Cardinal Willem Eijk, the Dutch cardinal and Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, requested that Pope Francis bring light into the confusion concerning the question as to how to deal with…Continue Reading

When Selena Miller, a practicing Catholic, applied to DePaul, she had no idea it was a Catholic university. Damita Meneves, another practicing Catholic, said she has met only one other Catholic student in her first year at DePaul. DePaul is…Continue Reading

His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, spoke recently with Thinking with the Church, hosted by Chris Altieri, who is also a regular contributor to Catholic World Report. Cardinal Burke responds to questions regarding the interpretation and reception of the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris…Continue Reading

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By DON FIER (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wis., graciously took time out of his busy schedule to grant The Wanderer a wide-ranging interview during a recent visit to the Shrine. Included among the topics…Continue Reading

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke delivered the address below at the 32nd Annual Church Teaches Forum, “The Message of Fatima: Peace for the World,” Galt House, Louisville, Ky., July 22, 2017. The address is reprinted here with the kind permission of Cardinal Burke. All rights reserved. This is part one of the…Continue Reading

Catechism

Today . . .

There’s nothing, it seems, that the abortion chain Planned Parenthood won’t sue over. On Thursday, affiliates of the abortion chain in seven states sued the Trump administration for cutting funding for their questionable teen pregnancy prevention programs. The Daily Nonpareil reports the lawsuits argue that the Trump administration wrongly cut their funding prematurely and without cause. Nine groups, including Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington, Iowa, North Carolina, South C

CAMBRIDGE, England, February 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A respected Catholic historian and philosopher challenged Cardinal Blase Cupich during a lecture last week about Pope’ Francis so-called “revolution of mercy” that has caused what many are defending as a “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice. Professor John Rist, after listening to a February 9 lecture at Cambridge Universityin which Cardinal Cupich praised Pope Francis’ “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice, asked the Cardinal at the end of the lect

VIENNA, Austria, February 14, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Austria’s bishops, led by Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, are indignant over a retired bishop’s passionate defense of Catholic teaching in opposing Church “blessings” for homosexual unions. After Bishop Andreas Laun, the retired Auxiliary Bishop of Salzburg, Austria, published Monday his strong rebuke of the German bishops for proposing to bless homosexual couples, there has been an inten

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is all for clarity. It has been a consistent theme, as when in September of 2017 he issued a decree banning guns in all parishes, schools and other facilities across the archdiocese “so there would be absolute clarity on our position.” His official statement put “clarity” in italics. When he was bishop of Rapid City, he called for “civility and clarity” in discussing legislation that would limit abortion, but he…Continue Reading

BEIJING — A group of influential Catholics published an open letter Monday express their shock and disappointment at report that the Vatican could soon reach a deal with the Chinese government, warning that it could create a schism in the church in China. The Holy See has been in negotiations for several years with the Chinese Communist Party and is now belie

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Within a week of taking office on January 23, 2017, President Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, now called the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, which bans U.S. funding for abortions overseas. The expanded policy prohibits $9 billion in U.S. taxpayer money from funding foreign organizations that perform or…Continue Reading

By HANNAH BROCKHAUS VATICAN CITY (CNA/EWTN News) — The Congregation for the Causes of Saints has approved the second miracle needed for the canonization of Blessed Pope Paul VI, allowing his canonization to take place, possibly later this year. According to Vatican Insider, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the miracle by a…Continue Reading

By STEPHEN M. KRASON (Editor’s Note: Stephen M. Krason’s Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic column appears monthly [sometimes bimonthly] in Crisis. He is professor of political science and legal studies and associate director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is also cofounder and president of…Continue Reading

By LISA BOURNE (Editor’s Note: LifeSiteNews ran this story on February 5.) + + + A Catholic priest is calling on bishops to excommunicate the 14 Catholic-identifying U.S. senators who voted two weeks ago against banning late-term abortions. He is also calling on priests to deny the Catholic pro-abortion senators Holy Communion. “Today is the…Continue Reading

By JAMES LIKOUDIS The centuries-old theological debate concerning the existence of Limbo for unbaptized babies (the limbo puerorum as a state of natural happiness) led to the 2007 publication of the document The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized by the International Theological Commission (ITC). The commission concluded there are “serious…Continue Reading

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Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

By DON FIER For a variety of reasons (a defect of consent, a diriment impediment, or a defect of the required form), many supposed modern-day marriages entered into by Catholic persons are invalid from their origin in the eyes of God and the Church. However, as we saw last week, depending on the circumstances, the Church has procedures by which…Continue Reading

Q. Concerning what our Blessed Mother said in Fatima about the rosary, I am confused as to whether or not she meant us to meditate on the mysteries while we are praying the Hail Marys or whether she meant us to meditate on the mysteries right before we say the Hail Marys. The consensus seems to be that we are…Continue Reading

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Second Sunday Of Lent Readings: Gen. 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 Romans 8:31b-34 Mark 9:2-10 In the first reading today we hear about Abraham’s nearly incomprehensible act of faith and love for God shown in his willingness to sacrifice his own son. We have to be careful not to read this in a vacuum. This test, which…Continue Reading

By ANDREA GAGLIARDUCCI (Wanderer Editor’s Note: Catholic News Agency on February 3 published a commentary concerning a 1989 Vatican response to dissent against Humanae Vitae. Below is an excerpted version of that commentary. Following that, we reprint the full text of the 1989 Vatican response, which, as the CNA commentary explains, is now available on the Vatican’s website. Please also…Continue Reading

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK A joke sometimes recounted among clergy goes along these lines: Someone greets a wise old priest by asking, “What’s new?”, and he responds, sagely, “Christ is risen!” The humor here is less about what’s new than about the fact that everything, other than the only true revolution of Christ’s Incarnation and triumph over death, is…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN Great sinners make great saints. It takes a strong-willed child to become a saint. These are statements which would easily fit saints such as Mary Magdalene and St. Augustine. In the thirteenth century, a young lady free in spirit and strong in will led such a life that she was essentially driven from her home village, but…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN In the lives of the saints one thing is very common: They have such a strong desire to do God’s will that nothing will hinder their work. Many saints, despite illness, weak health, or many other obstacles achieved their goals. Frequently the amount of work accomplished by such individuals seems humanly impossible — and, of course, it…Continue Reading